Watch Your Portions to Trim Your Waistline

The biggest mistake that people make when trying to lose weight is over-eating. They may stop eating junk food entirely and start eating healthy food, quit soda and stick to drinking water. But they eat too much of the healthy food and don’t realize that it is hurting their weight loss progress. Yes, there is such thing as too much fruit or whole wheat bread. And no, eating a bag of almonds isn’t better than a doughnut.

That doughnut carried 300 calories and the almonds were 1000 calories. Of course the almonds have more nutritional value, but if the portion size is too large, it’ll ruin your progress because the calorie count is too high. The only way to avoid making this mistake is to restrict your portion sizes and be smart about what you are eating. A lot of people don’t realize what constitutes one serving or one healthy portion of meat or chicken, and usually eat three to four times as many carbs as they should per sitting. A new popular program by Autumn Calabrese teaches how using the 21 day fix containers to teach portion control can help you drop weight dramatically. The program contains seven different containers in different colors that are coordinated according to each food group. Yellow containers are quite small and they are for carbohydrates that are healthy and will provide energy to get you through the day.

The red containers are for proteins, primarily from white meats or lean red meat and dairy such as yogurt and cottage cheese.

Fruits and vegetables allow for larger portions and you can have between 2-5 portions each day because these are low in calories and high in nutrients. You can also have some fats and cheeses but in smaller quantities since fat contains higher calories per gram than carbs or proteins do. By taking in smaller portion sizes each day using these containers, you’ll learn to be able to eat reasonably when going out to restaurants as well.

The problem in America is that portion sizes even in restaurants or at home are over twice as big as they should be. If we are eating twice as much as our bodies need, we are eating for a larger body, and your body will become that large. So it is important to eat for the body that you want, not the body that you have. Eat smaller portions and you will become smaller yourself.

Also by adding in regular cardio and weight training, you’ll continue to burn more calories and be able to build a strong, fit body that you will be proud to show off on the beach come summer!